Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 40
Harry Trevalga: You and your publication have unfairly discriminated against my poems. I have submitted thirty poems ...
rjaf123July 15, 2020
Choice A
I was wondering out of curiosity why it wouldn’t be A? I didn’t choose this answer, but it is very tempting since it seems like a foundational aspect of the issue in the passage. I mainly wanted an explanation and see your guys’ professional thoughts on it. Thanks!
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Thanks for the question! Well, let’s look look at the question again. Harry Trevalga is saying his poems are being discriminated against because the editor has a grudge against him. And the publisher disagrees, saying that the editorial policy and practice is fair, since the poetry editor doesn’t ever see the names of the poets, and couldn’t have known it was him.
Now we’re being asked for an assumption the publisher makes in replying to Trevalga; in other words, this is a strengthen with necessary premise question, and we can use the negation test to check out answers. So let’s take a look at (A). Does the publisher assume that the poetry editor doesn’t bear a grudge against Harry Trevalga for winning the award? No, not at all. The publisher could believe that the poetry editor does have a grudge, but it doesn’t matter because the poetry editor wouldn’t know who he was. So (A) isn’t a necessary assumption. And we can test it with the negation test; let’s say the poetry editor does bear a grudge against Harry Trevalga for winning the award. Does the publisher’s argument fall apart? No, since again, even if the publisher does have a grudge, the editor’s point is that she doesn’t know who’s writing what poems. So the argument doesn’t get weakened by the negation of (A), which means it’s not a necessary assumption, and (A) is the wrong answer.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
